


Monster Day

by lunrdarling



Category: IASIP, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it's always sunny
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friday the 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 22:00:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12351393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunrdarling/pseuds/lunrdarling
Summary: It's Friday the 13 and Charlie isn't having any of it.





	Monster Day

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the fact that it's actually Friday the 13th today.

“Where’s Charlie?” Mac asked, looking around the bar. 

“I don’t know,” Dennis waved it off, “He’s probably in the basement or the air vents or something. Who cares.” 

“It’s almost 4 in the afternoon. Usually we see him by now,” Mac looked at Dee, “Right?”

“Yeah,” She nodded, leaning casually onto the bar from where she stood behind it. Honestly, she’d been wondering where he was since about 11 in the morning. Of course she hadn’t said anything about it. Mac and Dennis had been discussing something that turned into arguing about something and she knew that interrupting them would have just turned them onto her instead of arguing with each other. She didn’t want to be the focus of their hostility today. 

“Well where the fuck is he then?” Dennis asked, obviously annoyed by Mac’s change in subject. Dee wondered if Mac really cared about where Charlie was or if he was just losing whatever argument they were having and wanted to talk about something else. 

Mac went into the back office, although they would have known if he was in there so he didn’t really need to check. Dennis went around and checked under the booths and in the bathroom. None of them would have put it past Charlie to have passed out or hiding in any of those places for whatever Charlie-type reason he had. 

Dee didn’t help them look. She stood behind the counter and went through all the things she knew about Charlie and about where he could be. If they were going to figure it out without going out and hunting him down then she’d need to think like Charlie. It wasn’t easy. Most people might think that it was a fairly easy feat, because most people thought Charlie was an idiot. In reality, Charlie’s mind was a complex and confusing maze that only he knew how to navigate (most of the time). 

Just as she was running out of possible ideas, something clicked. 

“What’s today?” She asked Mac when he came back to the bar.

“Friday. Why?”

Without saying anything, Dee grabbed her jacket and her purse. She headed towards the door. She could hear Mac asking where she was going but she didn’t bother to explain anything as she left the bar and walked towards her car.

* * *

Dee was standing in front of the door to Charlie and Frank’s apartment in about 15 minutes. 

“Charlie!” She knocked against the door. She knew he probably wouldn’t answer but she thought she’d give it a try anyway. Dee waited a bit before knocking again, “Charlie! I know you’re in there.” 

When he still didn’t answer, she tried the door. It wasn’t open but he’d given her a key for “emergencies”. Dee was pretty sure he’d given it to her for as a way to tell her how he was feeling about her without having to say it out loud. It had made her feel pretty special at the time. She agreed that she wouldn’t use it in front of Mac and Dennis and Frank, or let them know she had it. He was thankful for that. 

She unlocked it and entered the apartment, closing it behind her. 

“Charlie?”

She glanced around the apartment. Her eyes narrowed in on a door with a considerable amount of trash and miscellaneous items in front of it. Dee walked over to it and pushed some of the trash to the side with her foot. The door stuck when she first pulled it, but opened after a bit of force. The light from the apartment spilled into the closet and revealed a very defensive looking Charlie. He was shining a flashlight directly in her face. She put up a hand to block it from her eyes. 

“Jesus Christ, Charlie. Turn that off.” 

She dropped her hand when he complied. He stared at her and she stared back for a few seconds. He had a plastic bag of items he was clutching in his lap, along with a baseball bat leaning up against the wall. 

“So… Friday the 13th?” 

“Yes, Dee. It’s a Monster Day,” He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“What’s in the bag?” She asked. 

“Well okay, I looked up some stuff online that’s supposed to keep away monsters today,” He opened the bag and set it on the floor of the closet so he could go through it, “I already knew about the grass, right?” He picked up a wad of grass that he’d tied together with a rubber band, then set it back in the bag, “Then someone said something about an acorn, but I couldn’t find one so I got a bag of peanuts from the gas station because I figured it was the same thing, since they’re in the nut family.”

She casually crossed her arms and nodded as he showed her the items. 

“I guess you’re supposed to pick up a penny and a pencil off the ground today but I didn’t want to be walking around in the open just /hoping/ to find them, so I just put them in without finding them on the ground, because it’s like basically the same thing,” He seemed to have gotten wrapped up in himself as he continued to explain to her his reasonings, “Then there’s a lot of pepper at the bottom of the bag because everybody knows that pepper wards off bad luck.”

He looked up at her like he was finished. She opened her mouth to say something, but then he remember another thing and spoke before she had the chance to.

“Oh! And! And, I put my clothes on inside out because that helps. I don’t really get that one but maybe it makes the monsters think your body is already inside out so they don’t bother you? I’m not sure, really, but as long as it keeps me safe then it doesn’t matter.” 

He closed the bag and tied it up again. 

She didn’t really know where to start, exactly. She could have told him that it wasn’t just grass that he needed, but a four leaf clover. Maybe she could have told him that a lot of those things were supposed to ward off any bad luck because those specific items have been symbols with specific meanings, and that it doesn’t really count if you use substitutes. She knew the pepper was specific to throwing over your shoulder after you’d spilled salt, and a penny was only lucky if you picked it up off the ground when it was face up. 

None of those things would do any good, though. All it would do was crush his spirits and upset him. It might even send him into a panic thinking that he had no real protection from any monsters that he thought were coming his way. There was no real reason to burst his bubble. It was all in his head anyway, so if he thought that those items would ward off whatever might be coming to get him, then that was all that mattered. 

“So you were just gonna leave me out in the world to get eaten by monsters then?” Dee joked. She should have known, though, that he took it too seriously to not think she was genuinely upset or afraid for her own life today. 

“Oh my god, Dee! Oh my god!” Charlie had a look on his face like someone had told him he’d accidentally killed a man. He looked guilty and panicked. He started to stand up, but she put up a hand to stop him. 

“It’s okay, Charlie,” She laughed a little, “I’m kidding,” He didn’t think it was funny, so she continued, “I can hold my own against anything that comes knocking on my door.”

He shook his head, his eyes wide. 

“Oh no, Dee. You might think that now but you can’t. No one can! The best thing to do is just hide until it’s all over,” He was shaking his head still.

At this point, she was at a loss for words. He’d talked to her before about his thoughts about this day and what he thought might happen to him if the monsters came for him or if they decided they wanted to come after everyone all at once or any of the other thoughts he’d cooked up that scared the living hell out of him. She knew how serious he was about it all. She never thought about having to deal with it herself. It snuck up on her like the monsters that Charlie talked about. Maybe she should have been prepared to help him not be so afraid. 

“Dee,” He whispered quietly, suddenly changing his tone. He was looking around nervously, “I’ve already kept the door open too long. They’re gonna find where I am!” 

“Okay well,” She adjusted her purse on her shoulder, “I can just shut the door and leave you alone and let you stay safe then.” 

“No!” He yelled when Dee went to put her hand on the door. It startled her a bit. She looked back at him, “You can’t go back out there! I can’t believe I hadn’t thought about giving you protection before! You don’t have anything to keep you safe out there and, and I don’t have enough to share,” He looked from his bag back to Dee back to the plastic bag again. 

“It’s okay Charlie. I’ll be fine.”

He shook his head profusely. 

“You have to hide in the closet with me,” He was back to whispering again. 

“Charlie…” She sighed. 

“I’m serious! This is a dryer situation!” He meant dire, “You could get mauled!!”

She glanced over at the front door and then back into the small closet again. It would be a tight fit and she knew they’d be invading each other’s personal space big time. That wasn’t necessarily a huge problem, because it wasn’t like it would be the first time. She just wasn’t sure if she’d be able to handle it without feeling too claustrophobic. 

“Please, Dee,” He looked up at her with his puppy dog eyes. 

She could never say no when he looked at her like that. She was pretty sure he knew that.

“Fine,” She sighed again and put her purse down on the outside of the closet, not wanting to bring it inside with her. 

Just as she was about to step inside, he stopped her. 

“What?”

“You have to turn your clothes inside out first.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers for a second and took in a deep breath before letting it out slowly. 

“I’m only gonna do my shirt,” She told him. 

After she had her shirt flipped inside out, she entered the closet and shut the door behind her. It was dark inside and he flicked the flashlight on to give her some light so she could get situated. She wasn’t really too comfortable at first. She was trying to stay at some distance away from Charlie. He was on high alert. His tense energy was stressful, but his body warmth was nice.

The longer she was in the closet, the more she got used to the darkness and the silence. Dee started to relax and allow herself to get closer to Charlie. She wasn’t sure at what point it happened but somehow she ended up directly behind Charlie, her legs spread out on either side of him as he sat cross legged in between them. She wrapped her arms around his lower torso from behind and rested her head on his back. He stayed on alert but his muscles relaxed a considerable amount. 

Dee had nothing she was actually afraid of, so she didn’t feel the need to be on guard or be frightened. Part of her kind of hoped that her presence would comfort Charlie a little, having him know he wasn’t completely alone while he was hiding from the things he thought might hurt him. She wouldn’t let anything hurt him if monsters did come barging in. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t. 

She felt herself start to fall asleep with the warmth of Charlie’s body heating her up and the darkness encompassing her the way it was. Being wrapped around Charlie was soothing and comfortable. Sometimes he’d flinch or jump a little if he heard a sound that stuck out more than others, but it didn’t disturb her too much. In fact, she’d gotten so comfortable and relaxed that she could feel herself started to doze off. 

Dee let herself drift to sleep with the hope that Charlie would eventually calm down enough to do the same.


End file.
